Excellent thread started by respree, a forum moderator at Cre8asite, where he posts a thread at SEW forums named SEO :: How do you separate truth from speculation?.
This thread discusses how to, in a sense, weed out the truth from forum posts. As you can imagine, and have seen, there are thousands of new threads started everyday at the various SEM forums. How does one know which SEO "facts" are true and which ones are false? In the thread linked to above, members discuss how they go about this complex task.
Jill Whalen (owner of HighRankings) says "If stuff that certain people say sounds reasonable and plausible, then try it out for yourself and see what happens."More well known forum faces speak up in this thread. Its a must see.RCJordan (really long time mod/admin at WMW) says "As for whom to believe, this often falls into 'specialist' categories now. I know guys who can tell me more than I want to know about every conceivable type of redirect but wouldn't know a css file if it bit him."
projectPHP (covers many forums and mod at HighRankings) says "The same way you do in real life: trust your instincts."
Nick W (an other WMW legend) says "Personally, i have a little 'set' of forum posters i regularly watch becuase over the years i've grown to trust what they say, i dont have a written down list, but I know who they are..."
From my perspective, I also have my own list of people I watch. Like respree, who must have started several posts that I covered here. Besides for knowing which members are experts in which areas, I also try, when I can, to find evidence of any kind to validate any theory. Often when I can not, I won't write about it - or I will say that this is an unproven theory but sounds interesting.